34. Resistance and Armor - No-Selling and Deviant Play
Resistance fascinates me. I’ve said as much before, and I think my favourite part of it is how it creates an internal narrative about the score. Resistance is a refusal to follow the agreed rules of play and that we should absolutely be designing more spaces for this kind of refusal.
“In my old primary school, when I was in the most senior year, I remember playing Battleship with a kid. “B4”, I said, hunting for his last damn ship. That little 2x1 that they’re now calling a Patrol Boat. After three or so rounds, him unable to find my Submarine, I hit the last place it could possibly be and poked my head above the separating rampart:
“It has to be there! I’ve hit A3, B4, D3, B2. It has to be there!”
“Oh, did you say B2?”
“Yes! First!”
“Uhh yeah, it was there.”
What we’re seeing here is a player refusing to acknowledge a hit in a system that requests self-policing. The Anti-touché. I’ve heard it described as “Bearhiding” in Boffer LARP spaces, where the player doesn’t acknowledge they’ve been hit by a weapon. Airsoft refers to the desired behaviour as “calling hits” but doesn’t have a term for not calling hits (then tend to just use “cheating” or “not calling hits”). Either way it fascinates me because pretending that something that defeats you doesn’t defeat you is a beautiful interaction and only having a frame for it as simply “cheating” means that we miss a great opportunity to meet this play and make something of it.
One of my favourite design spaces is to take acts of deviant play or infraction play (acts that break rules and are unintended) and centre them as intended play. This is, for example, why ARPIA Game of the Year 2023 Decaying Orbit invites players to tell a story that incoherent and disruptive: Because I found that to be a common form of deviant play in games Descended from the Queen. So, let’s talk about the deviant play of refusing to acknowledge a hit.
Games provide a wonderful space for dealing with failure. There’s a ton of different reasons for this, but the two that always stand out to me are the fact that failures provide an opportunity for players to overcome. Ryan and Deci, (2000) call this Self-Determination Theory - By creating an obstacle to overcome, the game also creates an opportunity for us to self-assert. The other reason is that failure in games can be inherently an invitation to engage with the systems of the game. Hefkaluk, Linehan, and Trace (2024) refer to how “in-loop” failure (that is, failure intended by the designer, as opposed out “out-of-loop” unintended failure, like a failure to understand the controls or goal of a game) can provide a chance for players to develop novel strategies:
“Players first acquired information by surveying the environment and becoming familiar with new mechanics, using their knowledge to plan and advance forward. Participant 8 broke down his analytical thinking process when approaching a new area:
’I immediately try and get out […]. I’d never make it the first time, so it’d always be like […] ‘What’s this game actually want me to do’, you know. Then I sit and look at the screen, so take time to… like, ‘Oh, this platform is moving left to right in this length of time’ kind of thing. Take notes of level.’
When problems remained past the planning stage, participants became inventive and selective in their solutions. They implemented their existing skills in novel ways or used online playthroughs to clarify the correct sequence of moves”
Failure in challenge—focused games is an invitation to restrategise, to create a novel approach, or to review previous approaches. This makes it a tremendous tool for moving players into new experiences. Whether this is about escalation (“do more”) or orthogonality (“do different”), both avenues can provide a positive experience for the player (and from a design perspective, can generate significant engagement, and also generate significant art). The challenge has to first be defined by failure. Zooming on on the quote above:
Participant 8 broke down his analytical thinking process when approaching a new area:
”I immediately try and get out […]. I’d never make it the first time, so it’d always be like […] ‘What’s this game actually want me to do’, you know. Then I sit and look at the screen, so take time to… like, ‘Oh, this platform is moving left to right in this length of time’ kind of thing. Take notes of level.”-Fail, fail again, fail better: How players who enjoy challenging games persist after failure in “Celeste” (Hefkaluk et al., 2024)
The challenge is defined by the setback. One cannot win on the first challenge. As the famous backyard cricket rule asserts - You can’t get out first ball. The batter[1] has to face a few balls to solidify the challenge to the bowler. The hero, Campbell says, has to undergo Death and Rebirth before they can undergo Revelation and Atonement. One must Empire before they can Jedi.
But why am I telling you about this when I could just be showing you the Top 10 NO SELLERS in Wrestling History. The No-Sell is a classic in wrestling storylines. Wrestlers establish certain powers or abilities, and those become the standard verbs by which all interactions are measured. The Undertaker becomes a powerful force not because he’s actually stronger, but because he interacts with the established verbs differently. “In the early part of his career, ‘Taker’s no-selling added to the mystique of his gimmick as an undead wrestler," (Wrestling Flashbacks, 2024) and this signaled him as a challenge to be overcome rather than just any jobber. The use of the no-sell established a degree of challenge for the villain, and no-selling a finisher (a move that’s meant to end a match due to its perceived power) means that our audience-insert (what some may call a persona or character-construct, were this a game) has to find a novel way to overcome. When they do, the baddie “sells” the hit, goes down, and success is celebrated.
The obvious RPG parallel here is the villain that shakes off your attacks, before falling to your overpowering fireballs. There’s a few options with which to pursue this, but the on worth highlighting is 5th Edition’s Legendary Resistance.
When you’ll need at least four Polymorphs - Monster Manual, 5th edition (Wizards of the Coast, 2014)
Blades uses armour and resistance in the same way. The consequence hits, in a way that is tangible and expressed to players (creating the expectation), but the player character refuses the hit (refuses to sell). Setting up the player character as competent and powerful above the challenges they face. The interesting point here is that a traditional no-sell relationship (GM with the resource, knocking down the player) creates a Hero’s Journey-style progression, where the characters are the ones showing their capacity to resist and overcome until the resource runs dry.
The nature of this experience is interesting to me because it’s spotlighting deviant play. It’s making “cheating” and having the everything-proof shield into a desirable play experience. I’ve gone on record to say that finding behaviour that players are already engaging in, and then making it a legitimate part of play is good design. And I don’t walk back from that position for a second. The nature of being able to say as a player that we were actually wearing the everything-proof shield and the GM just didn’t notice is a joyous one. It creates a sense of being sharper or outsmarting without actually requiring the players to do either (in the same way that legendary resistance doesn’t actually require the Big-Bad NPC to have an interesting defence or enact the puzzle of a glowing weak spot). In both cases, we offload the reveal, the no-sell, to the economy of play.
Which makes me think. If they’re the ones with the no-sell, and they’re the ones who start off strong and get ground down to finally have to struggle in the end…maybe this is less about providing challenge to the players and more about providing challenge the GM, who doesn’t have these tools. Maybe, after all, the players are the heels.
